Lucky casual gamer wins 1 million dollars!

12 September 2006

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Posted by:Josh

Casual games have been catching on big lately since the introduction of Xbox Live Arcade set the console world ablaze with it’s casual-focused line of new and classic titles (such as Geometry Wars: Evolved, Texas Hold ‘Em and Hexic 3D), which have recieved tremendous success. Of course, casual games have been played the world over long before Microsoft‘s big black & silver boxes hit the scene thanks to the world of web-games and the wonders of the Internet. Where hundreds and thousands of casual games can be played for free. From simple word-game, board-game and card-games to arcade-style titles and more, the list is seemingly endless.

At the first-ever Worldwide Web-Games conference held in Hollywood, California, a contest was held which featured three popular casual games–Bejeweled 2, Solitaire and Zuma (released on DS recently as Mangetica)–with the prize being an astounding $1 million US dollars going to the winner who claimed the most broken jewels, played the most cards (and I assume won their game at Solitaire) and bust the most balls (no that’s not a joke). That extremely lucky person was Kavitha Yalavarthi of Odessa, Texas, who was crowned the winner of “World’s Best Casual Gamer” as awarded by Fun Technologies.

Casual games have been gaining mass appeal lately by game developers due to their low-development costs and their potential to lure in non-gamers and other demographics of people who don’t normally play video games (30 to 40-something stay-at-home housewives being one of the largest demographics of casual gaming players). Many industry experts believe the sector is due for considerable growth domestically over the next five years, with some pegging it as a billion-dollar industry by 2011.

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